EFI-X a scam?

By TruckWEB
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Stetson

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Not that much of a surprise, nor does it really seem like a scam if the company had been open about what they were doing. I think the same thing is at work with some of the USB drives sold to 'jailbreak' Apple TVs, its software that you could use yourself except they have provided you a convenience by setting it up on a USB drive that is ready to go, and in the case of EFI-X in a form that can be plugged straight into an unused USB header on your motherboard.

If the company had made it fairly clear that they were just providing convenience and support for existing software it would have been fine.

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houlty

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this is bad from ASEM, $10 at cost, $280 retail...wow!! nice margins for ASEM.

i know Boz raved about these things, so his thoughts on the matter would be nice to here as this will directly concern him.

also, after reading the article, i find it ridiculous that after it all ASEM are looking to sue AsereBLN.

Not that much of a surprise, nor does it really seem like a scam. I think the same thing is at work with some of the USB drives sold to 'jailbreak' Apple TVs, its software that you could use yourself except they have provided you a convenience by setting it up on a USB drive that is ready to go, and in the case of EFI-X in a form that can be plugged straight into an unused USB header on your motherboard.

but they charge ?280 dollars for it according to the article... surely that can be called a scam.

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The_Observer

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this is bad from ASEM, $10 at cost, $280 retail...wow!! nice margins for ASEM.

i know Boz raved about these things, so his thoughts on the matter would be nice to here as this will directly concern him.

also, after reading the article, i find it ridiculous that after it all ASEM are looking to sue AsereBLN.

thats true, i hope they get sued for using open source code!!!

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Yusuf M. Veteran

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Basically, it's nothing more than a USB stick with built-in DRM. That really sucks. From the article, it says the cost of manufacturing these EFI-X modules is a mere $10.

Check this out: http://www.expresshd.com/

I came across that website after searching "EFI-X" on Google. The V1 model sells for $189.99 and the V1.1 model sells for $239.99. It's a shame because I'm sure people bought this thinking it would be a "Boot Processing Unit (BPU)". I had a bad feeling about this since I first heard about it.

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Stetson

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but they charge ?280 dollars for it according to the article... surely that can be called a scam.

They can charge however much they want for their product/service as long as its clear what that product/service is. I think in this case the scam is that they didn't attribute the software to its rightful creators and by being so opaque about the workings of the device led people to believe that it was something proprietary.

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Rudy

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I'm not surprised one bit. A lot of people in the OSX86 community had a pretty good idea this is what they were doing

They can charge however much they want for their product/service as long as its clear what that product/service is. I think in this case the scam is that they didn't attribute the software to its rightful creators and by being so opaque about the workings of the device led people to believe that it was something proprietary.

I'd agree with you if the EFI-X was 100% custom code they wrote themselves but they stole everything...

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The_Observer

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Interview with Davide Rutigliano CEO of Art Studios Entertainment Maker of EFi-X - Published 21/01 - 2009 - from testfreaks.com

8. TF: What is your company?s stance on the linking of the EFiX BPU to the Hackintosh/OSX86 world?

DR: Although I don?t have any personal grudge towards them, linking us to them is not correct. Our approach is entirely different, and contrarily to them all our code and development is our own only, and we don?t hack anything at all. What we have (even our bugs:)33; :) ) has been created only for us.

hahaha LIES LIES LIES

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houlty

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They can charge however much they want for their product/service as long as its clear what that product/service is. I think in this case the scam is that they didn't attribute the software to its rightful creators and by being so opaque about the workings of the device led people to believe that it was something proprietary.

they stole open source code, rebranded it as their own, and consciously led people to believe that this was more than a freely available bootloader, then charged ridiculous amounts of money for it... it's difficult to see this as a genuine and honest business practice.

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Stetson

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they stole open source code, rebranded it as their own, and consciously led people to believe that this was more than a freely available bootloader, then charged ridiculous amounts of money for it... it's difficult to see this as a genuine and honest business practice.

Right, that's the part to take issue with and is what I was saying. If they had made it clear that the product/service they were offering was configuring and installing freely available software for convenience and providing support it wouldn't matter how much they charged: $1, $280, or $2,800.

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Steeley

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Wait, wait, wait...I'm not sure I understand this. I was actually going to buy one of these a few months ago but the price totally put me off. I was of the impression it made your PC behave such that you could install OSX as you would on a true Mac with no additional kexts needed or other hackintosh fixes, such that it was running natively. Is that not the case?

For example, a lot of people with hackintoshes can't run Snow Leopard at the moment because of the lack of 64-bit kexts available. The way they were marketing this device was that it shouldn't matter - your PC is now a genuine Mac.

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Eric Veteran

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I kinda suspected when I heard about all the encryption on the firmware. "Building your own" should be as simple as installing Chameleon/Boot-132 on a USB stick and setting your computer to boot from USB devices first. You could even hot-glue it to the inside of your computer and plug it into a header cable to make it tidy.

Wait, wait, wait...I'm not sure I understand this. I was actually going to buy one of these a few months ago but the price totally put me off. I was of the impression it made your PC behave such that you could install OSX as you would on a true Mac with no additional kexts needed or other hackintosh fixes, such that it was running natively. Is that not the case?

For example, a lot of people with hackintoshes can't run Snow Leopard at the moment because of the lack of 64-bit kexts available. The way they were marketing this device was that it shouldn't matter - your PC is now a genuine Mac.

No, that is the case. EFI-X most likely just had the standard 'hidden' kexts or EFI strings.

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houlty

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Wait, wait, wait...I'm not sure I understand this. I was actually going to buy one of these a few months ago but the price totally put me off. I was of the impression it made your PC behave such that you could install OSX as you would on a true Mac with no additional kexts needed or other hackintosh fixes, such that it was running natively. Is that not the case?

For example, a lot of people with hackintoshes can't run Snow Leopard at the moment because of the lack of 64-bit kexts available. The way they were marketing this device was that it shouldn't matter - your PC is now a genuine Mac.

not exactly, as they were very specific about the compatible hardware, and as you can imagine the list of hardware wasn't very extensive.

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